Our Members: Who We Are - The Company of Strangers

The Members of The Company of Strangers:

Alex Kettle

Alex’s first introduction to gaming came at age 9 when his cousin gave him the old red boxed D&D set. Once hooked, RPGs have been a habit ever since. Shortly after starting to learn the world of D&D, a friend who was into collecting baseball cards took him into a small store to buy some. Here, Alex found his first Battletech minis. Made of lead and packaged in small bags, they instantly caught his imagination and a whole new world of gaming opened up. While collecting minis for several years, he eventually started attending Toronto Trek where he first met Dave Graham and Adrian Johnson and gained a whole new interest in the larger world of gaming in general, eventually running events there himself.

It was while working one summer near the end of University that he met Gord Rose, or rather knew of him, as Gord was one of the trainers at the call centre where he was working (Although it was a year later that he met Gord in a gaming environment at Toronto Trek, it was a tremendous shock that he’s still to recover from).

After graduating from York, while working at MDS, Alex bought into a gaming store in Barrie (a long and sordid story), that led him to take up more interest in the industry side of gaming. For years, Alex slowing worked his way into the industry, helping to run events at conventions and eventually helping companies at Origins and Gencon.

A few years after opening and managing one of the fastest growing game stores around, he lost it to his business partners (that long and sordid story again), and opened a distribution company, Upper Canada Games, which he runs to this day.

It was during this time running his company that Dave first invited him to join in for a D&D game at his place. Now a couple of years later it's a regular Saturday event.

Currently Alex’s entire life consists of working at MDS at night, gaming on a Saturday with ‘The Company’ and running Upper Canada Games. Someday, he hopes to return to retail and open another store with his new business partner Paulo Nave.